TOP500

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The total computational power of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world of 1993 through 2008 (In French).
The distribution of computational power by country according to the Top 500 list in November 2008.

The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The project aims to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases rankings on HPL, a portable implementation of the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark for distributed-memory computers.

The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The list is updated twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputer Conference in June, the second one is presented in November at the IEEE Super Computer Conference in the USA.

Contents

[edit] Project history

In the early 1990s, a new definition of supercomputer was needed to produce meaningful statistics. After experimenting with metrics based on processor count in 1992, the idea was born at the University of Mannheim to use a detailed listing of installed systems as the basis. Early 1993 Jack Dongarra was convinced to join the project with his Linpack benchmark. A first test version was produced in May 1993, partially based on data available on the Internet, including the following sources:[1][2]

The information from those sources was used for the first two lists. Since June 1993 the TOP500 is produced bi-annually based on site and vendor submissions only.

[edit] The systems ranked #1 since 1993

[edit] List as of November 2008

The following table gives the Top 10 positions of the 32nd TOP500 List released during the ISC08 conference, November 14, 2008 in Austin, Texas.[3]

Rank Rmax
Rpeak
(Tflops)
Name Computer
Processor cores
Maker Site
Country, Year
1 1105
1456.7
Roadrunner BladeCenter QS22/LS21
129600 (Cell/Opteron)
IBM Los Alamos National Laboratory
  United States, 2008
2 1059
1381.4
Jaguar Cray XT5
150152 (Opteron)
Cray Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  United States, 2008
3 487.01
608.83
Pleiades SGI Altix ICE 8200EX
51200 (Xeon), InfiniBand
SGI NASA/Ames Research Center
  United States, 2008
4 478.2
596.4
Blue Gene/L eServer Blue Gene Solution
212992 (Power)
IBM Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  United States, 2007
5 450.3
557.1
Intrepid[4] Blue Gene/P Solution
163840 (Power)
IBM Argonne National Laboratory
  United States, 2007
6 433.2
579.38
Ranger Sun Constellation System
62976 (Opteron), Infiniband
Sun Texas Advanced Computing Center
  United States, 2008
7 266.3
355.51
Franklin Cray XT4
38642 (Opteron)
Cray NERSC/LBNL
  United States, 2008
8 205.0
260.2
Jaguar Cray XT4
30976 (Opteron)
Cray Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  United States, 2008
9 204.2
284.0
Red Storm Cray XT3
38208 (Opteron)
Cray NNSA/Sandia National Laboratories
  United States, 2008
10 180.6
233.47
Dawning 5000A Dawning
30720 (Opteron)
Dawning Shanghai Supercomputer Center
  People's Republic of China, 2008

[edit] Legend

  • Rank – Self explanatory, fastest computer on top.
  • Rmax – The highest score measured using the LINPACK benchmark suite. This is the number which is used to rank the computers. Measured in trillions of floating point operations per second, i.e. Teraflops.
  • Rpeak – This is the theoretical peak performance of the system. Measured in Tflops.
  • Name – Some supercomputers are unique, at least on its location, and are therefore christened by its owner.
  • Computer – The computing platform as it is marketed.
  • Processor cores – The number of active processor cores actively used running Linpack. After this figure is the processor architecture of the cores named. If the interconnect between computing nodes is of interest, it's also included here.
  • Maker – The manufacturer of the platform and hardware.
  • Site – The name of the facility operating the supercomputer.
  • Country – The country in which the computer is situated.
  • Year – The year the supercomputer went online. Since then the computer might have been upgraded.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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